Tag Archives: Anthony Fauci

medical news

Trump bowing out of daily rants provides confusing reactions

Oh, the confusion I am feeling at this moment trying to digest the news that Donald Trump might not be delivering his daily rants inside the White House press briefing room.

I stopped calling them “briefings” because they long ago ceased providing any useful information related to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

So now we hear that after Trump’s disastrous off-the-cuff riff about ingesting “disinfectants” to get rid of the deadly viral infection, the White House has reportedly persuaded POTUS to cool it with the daily appearances. Trump put out a Twitter message that suggested it’s his idea, that the media are asking too many nasty questions.

The confusion treks along several lines of thought.

Trump’s poll numbers appear to be slipping. Donald Trump’s daily rants are hurting his re-election chances, according to pundits, pollsters and politicians. Accordingly, given my disdain for this fellow, I am torn between wanting him to keep blathering and babbling incoherently to create for the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden a clearer path to defeating this clown.

Trump is prone to say something dangerous if he continues. Thus, if he keeps delivering nonsense, he might say something that puts more American lives in dire peril. You see what I mean here? I don’t give a damn about Trump’s poll numbers, other than to see them continue to slide. I do give a damn, though, about whether this idiot will say something even more stupid than he did when he was “thinking out loud” about whether applying “disinfectants” would kill the virus “in a minute.”

Leave it to the medical experts to tell us what we need to know. I’m all in there. Donald Trump has some first-rate medical and scientific minds at his disposal. Dr. Anthony Fauci is a first-class infectious disease expert. Dr. Deborah Birx has done great work on HIV/AIDS research. Dr. Robert Redfield runs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Surgeon General Jerome Adams is a clear-headed thinker. Trump doesn’t listen to them. He prefers to hog the spotlight and say things that, well, make millions of us cringe; one of them, Dr. Birx, was caught on camera struggling mightily to control her facial muscles while Trump ran off at the mouth about disinfectants. 

I guess where I land is for Donald Trump just to keep his trap shut. Don’t discuss issues about which he knows nothing. He has inflicted enough damage already. I hope the damage is enough to doom his re-election. Meanwhile, the medical team working inside the White House can keep us informed on ways to protect ourselves and those we love.

medical news

Trump keeps inflicting grievous damage

Donald Trump’s daily White House press room rant was an abbreviated affair today. He and Vice President Mike Pence spoke for about 20 minutes and then — poof! — they were gone.

No answers to questions from reporters. No scolding the media for doing their job. No attempts to happy talk his way past the misery and tragedy caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

No sweat. I didn’t need to hear any more from the Moron in Chief. I have heard enough.

What I do need to say without any equivocation is that Donald Trump continues to inflict grievous damage on the country he was elected govern.

The abbreviated rant today does not dismiss the idiocy that poured out of Trump’s pie hole Thursday, when he mused aloud about whether ingesting bleach or other disinfectants might kill the coronavirus inside the body of the individual who ingests it. Is there anything you’ve heard come from the president of the United States that is more certifiably insane than that? I didn’t think so. This one tops the charts, man!

So now we hear that Trump might start reducing his TV exposure at these daily rants. He might not appear each day. Trump might have gotten the message — finally! — that he is doing himself more harm than good by blathering dangerous rhetoric.

I quit long ago taking a single thing that comes from Donald Trump with any semblance of seriousness. He is a serial liar who now has entered a dangerous new zone of danger: His absolute and astonishing ignorance is now threatening the lives of Trump adherents who might actually take this man seriously.

In spite of my obvious dismay and disgust over Trump’s latest disastrous rhetorical rant, I am even more dismayed by the medical experts’ surrounding him. They should be resigning en masse and they should condemn the moronic suggestion that swallowing, injecting or snorting poison might serve as a cure for a deadly viral infection.

Drs. Deborah Birx, Robert Redfield and Anthony Fauci are brilliant infectious disease experts. They are a key part of the White House pandemic response team. Why in the world can they stand by while Donald Trump throws out such idiocy?

I am shaking my head. I am slapping my forehead. I am beyond flabbergasted at the moronic blathering that keeps pouring out of Donald Trump’s yapper. What in the world is it going to take before we as a nation decide we have had enough of this imminently dangerous imbecile?

national news

Fire Fauci? Is this serious?

The Donald needs to be committed. Fit this guy with a straitjacket. Send him to the Rubber Room. Keep the lights turned on and watch him like a hawk.

Donald Trump has retweeted arguably the most insane message I’ve seen since this coronavirus pandemic exploded onto the worldwide scene. It was a hashtag that read #FireFauci.

What in the name of presidential idiocy is going on here?

“Fauci” is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has become a household name. He is arguably the world’s leading infectious disease expert. He’s been working diligently on the president’s coronavirus response task force. His task has been to provide information to the public on what we should expect and has been making recommendations to Donald Trump on what he should do to combat this virus.

Trump, as near as I can tell, isn’t listening to Fauci.

Now we’re hearing some chatter that Trump — the know-nothing president — might be growing disenchanted with Fauci.

Would he dare remove this brilliant mind from the center of decision-making as the Trump team struggles to find an answer to this pandemic?

Were he to do so, Trump well could put even more Americans in danger if we are denied hearing in an official capacity a certifiable expert on this deadly disease.

Instead, in Donald Trump’s vision of a perfect world, we would hear instead from a certifiable buffoon. The Donald well might be seriously off his rocker.

national news

‘New normal’ will require serious change of at least one habit

Dr. Anthony Fauci said it, so it must be true. He’s our preeminent infectious disease expert and his voice has become a source of reassurance in the midst of some of the confusion being sown by Donald J. Trump.

Regarding the coronavirus pandemic that still is sweeping across the globe, we’re starting to prepare for what’s being called “the new normal” once we get past the health crisis.

One aspect of the new normal, as stated by Dr. Fauci, is that we no longer should shake hands with those we meet. Eek. That means, oh, fist bumps, elbow bumps, locking pinkies?

I am an inveterate hand-shaker. I like shaking hands with strangers. It’s a way to establish a sort of cursory relationship. Dr. Fauci has said that ought to become a relic, something we no longer should do … if we are serious about keeping the coronavirus outbreak from recurring.

I guess we’ll also be keeping some distance from each other. The six-foot rule will stand in perpetuity, yes? I can deal with that more easily than getting rid of my hand-shaking habit.

The “new normal” is beginning to take some form out there. Get ready for it.

national news

Pence’s pettiness is so unbecoming

You have pettiness … and then you have Vice President Mike Pence.

The VP, who heads the Trump administration coronavirus pandemic response task force, has issued the strangest decree I can imagine.

He has ordered Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx — the task force’s preeminent medical experts on infectious disease — to stop appearing on CNN. Why? Because the network has chosen not to cover the entire task force briefings, which almost daily devolve into a campaign riff Donald J. Trump.

The president says nothing of importance at these briefings. Fauci and Birx, though, do offer expertise and knowledge of the fight in which we are engaged. CNN has chosen to report later what the principals say rather than covering them live.

That’s not good enough, says Pence.

If the briefings concentrated exclusively on the medical issues and if they focused more on the doctors than on the president, I could understand covering these events fully in real time. They don’t. They  become a forum for Trump to lie, to misdirect, to criticize others for the failings of his administration’s response to the pandemic.

CNN is not the only major media outlet to cease airing the briefings in their entirety. As Yahoo.com reported:

The New York Times, another outlet that has been a target of the Trump administration’s ire, stopped airing the briefings on its website entirely.

“We stopped doing that because they were like campaign rallies,” Elisabeth Bumiller, the paper’s Washington bureau chief, told the Washington Post. “The health experts often have interesting information, so we’re very interested in that, but the president himself often does not.”

Mike Pence petulance rips a page straight from the Donald Trump playbook. It’s disgraceful.

national news

End-of-tunnel light beginning to come into view?

That light we keep hearing might be “at the end of the tunnel” could be developing an identity.

Thank you, Dr. Anthony Fauci, for possibly giving us some hope.

Dr. Fauci, the nation’s premier infectious disease expert who is part of Donald Trump’s coronavirus pandemic response team, says that schools might be able to open for the next academic year. I need to emphasize the word “might.” Dr. Fauci doesn’t want to predict such an event, but he has indicated that the pandemic might be sufficiently under control by the end of summer to allow schools to reopen.

Texas has closed its public schools. The current academic year ends on May 22. The unofficial reopening date is May 4. I doubt seriously the school system will reopen in time to conclude the current year.

So I am going to hope that Dr. Fauci is correct that we can turn this corner in time for schools to reopen for the next year.

The learned doctor is the expert whose views deserve to be heeded.

medical news, national news

POTUS is getting it, finally: Pandemic is serious … and deadly

Donald Trump has signed on to what his medical response team has known all along: that the coronavirus pandemic is serious, it is deadly and it deserves an all-hands-on-deck response.

It took far too long for the president to accept what the scientists and medical gurus were telling him. However, his statement today tells me that the warnings he has heard are finally sinking into his thick, and vacuous skull.

Trump said today we can expect a very difficult two-week period ahead. The rate of COVID-19 infections are going to increase, as will the rate of death.

Governors have gotten it. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has extended the shelter in place directive to the end of April; he also has extended public school closures to May 4. Those dates remain fluid, of course, but at least our state government is taking the kind of proactive approach that — until this moment — has been missing at the federal level of government.

The president now projects 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from the virus. It’s a far cry from what he said not that long ago. It was just in February when Donald Trump said the infection stood at 15 and would vanish all by itself before too long. Hmm. It didn’t happen.

Indeed, it has gotten far worse than the president was letting on.

But … now he is on board with what the experts have told him. Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci are stellar infectious disease experts assigned to the task force led by Vice President Mike Pence. They have delivered a grim prognosis.

If only the president had accepted the bad news long before now. At least, though, he has signed on.

For now.

national news

Not interested in hearing what Trump ‘thinks’ or ‘believes’

This thought bears repeating.

I am not the least bit interested in hearing Donald John Trump tell us what he “thinks” or “believes” about the coronavirus pandemic. I am intensely interested, though, in hearing from medical and scientific experts about the data they analyze and what their expertise tells them about what the data reveal.

The president keeps taking the microphone at those daily White House briefings. Having told you already that I don’t listen to him blather on in the moment, I am left to read about what he says later in the day. And he keeps yapping and yammering about what he thinks is going to happen or whether he believes that hospital officials need all the respirators they are seeking.

The president needs to step out of the way and let the experts talk to the nation and the world about what they know, not what they think or believe.

Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on “Good Morning, America” today and offered stark, level-headed analysis of the crisis that is developing. GMA co-host George Stephanopoulos noted that Fauci has served six presidents since 1984 and has emerged as the nation’s premier infectious disease specialist. He never fails to deliver the facts in a calm, reassuring way … even when they reveal grim news, as they did today, Stephanopoulos said.

My message once more to Donald Trump? Stop talking.

medical news

Fauci: U.S. pandemic death toll could hit 200K

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Dr. Anthony Fauci is speaking — and please pardon my paraphrasing a well-worn cliché — truth to ignorance.

The nation’s top infectious disease doc has declared that the worldwide coronavirus pandemic could kill as many as 200,000 Americans and could infect millions more of us before it is finally brought, um, “under control.”

I fear the doctor is right. I also fear the man for whom he works — Donald Trump — is dead wrong when he keeps up the happy talk about what a “fantastic job” everyone is doing to stem the killer tide.

The U.S. death count has surpassed 2,000. It is climbing rapidly. The worst still hasn’t yet arrived. I am among millions of Americans who are waiting anxiously for the worst to get here. I’ll say to the worst: You may leave now.

It doesn’t matter one little bit to me that a 200,000-person casualty count isn’t the worst such incident to afflict the United States. The Centers for Disease Control said the 1918-19 flu pandemic killed more than 650,000 Americans; what’s more considering that our population then was far smaller than it is today, that death count becomes even more staggering.

Still, we are facing a potentially terrible time of it as the COVID-19 strain of the coronavirus does it filthy work around the world.

I no longer want the president of the United States to boast about what a great job he is doing. I want him to speak the truth.

medical news

Dr. Anthony Fauci: cult hero

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Dr. Anthony Stephen Fauci might be the nerdiest cult hero in American history.

He has become the de facto voice of reason within the Donald Trump administration, which is led by a pathological liar who also happens to be an ignoramus. Fauci has been the primo truth-teller among the men and women who’ve been briefing us daily about the progress of the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the United States.

He will turn 80 years of age next Christmas Eve. Fauci runs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is a giant among the physicians and scientists who work with the National Institute of Health.

Fauci has been charged with helping craft the nation’s response to the pandemic as it has circled the globe, killing thousands of human beings. It has claimed more than 1,000 Americans and the United States is now the world’s most infected nation, with more than 120,000 Americans infected by the unique coronavirus known as COVID-19.

Dr. Fauci, though, is facing a monumental task while reporting to pandemic task force chairman Vice President Mike Pence, who in turn reports to Donald J. Trump. You see, Pence is the nation’s No. 1 suck-up to Trump and Trump is the nation’s No. 1 purveyor of fake news.

So, when Fauci contradicts the crap that flies out of Trump’s mouth,  he runs the risk of angering the Top Liar, who has demonstrated a propensity for removing those who fail to fall in line with whatever falsehood he is peddling.

Trump tries to persuade us that we’ve got this pandemic “under control.” We don’t have it under control. The cases of infection are increasing daily and they are threatening the economic health — not to mention the physical health — of the nation.

Meanwhile, we have Dr. Fauci trying to tell us the truth. A social media Fauci Fan Club has emerged. I’m grappling with whether I should join. I likely won’t do it, but it surely is tempting.

However, I remain wedded to my belief that the nation needs this wise and learned man more than ever as an antidote to the imbecile to whom he must answer.